On August 30th at 7:15 PM Tate House Museum welcomes audiences to another Backyard Lecture beginning at sunset. Seth Goldstein has spent the last several years researching Maine and the West Indies Trade. He will provide details of the significant economic exchange in which Maine provided food that fed enslaved Africans and materials that built plantations in Caribbean locations such as Barbados, Haiti, and Cuba. Maine merchants exchanged these goods for what were considered luxury commodities at the time: sugar, rum, molasses, cocoa and exotic spices. Goldstein will exhibit how this trade provided a significant source of financial return for merchants from Portland specifically, and Maine generally. He will describe how the urban topography and architecture of Portland was shaped by this economic relationship and the horrid conditions that enslaved Africans endured to produce that wealth.
Seth Goldstein grew up on Cape Cod where he developed his passion for maritime history. He received his bachelor’s degree in European History from the University of California at Santa Cruz and his master’s degree in World History from Northeastern University. His research interests include the historic North Atlantic fishery, global piracy, New England shipwrecks and lighthouses, the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the Vietnam War era counter culture. He has worked for Greater Portland Landmarks and The Portland Harbor Museum and taught at the University of New England and Southern Maine Community College. Goldstein currently teaches at The Maine College of Art and Design. He is a member of the Atlantic Black Project-- a grass roots non-profit that examines Maine and New England’s marginalized history and the region’s complicity with the economics of enslavement. He is the Director of the Cushing’s Point Museum at Bug Light Park and is the Director of Development for the South Portland Historical Society.
Advance tickets are $12 for the general public, $10 for Tate House members and can be purchased on our website www.tatehouse.org or in our gift shop. At the door tickets are $15 for the general public and $12 for Tate House members. Bring your own blanket or chair. The Tate House ell will be open for a sneak peek at the house from 6:30-7:15 pm. If it rains the lecture will move to the Stroudwater Village Church at 1729 Congress St Portland.
FMI: Holly Hurd
Tate House Museum
1267 Westbrook St
Portland ME 04102
hkhurd@tatehouse.org
207-774-6177
